“Fainting fit,” he said to himself. “That sounds like being a girl. I don’t know, though: men faint as well as women when they are exhausted by pain or by bleeding. Well, I was exhausted, and now I’m strengthened and mustn’t let myself get so weak again, and what’s more, I mustn’t let poor Dick grow so weak. Oh, if old Reston were only here with his bottles of stuff! But I don’t know; perhaps I can get on without them, for it isn’t as if the poor chap was bad of a fever. Fever there is, of course, but it’s only the fever that comes from a wound, and wounds heal by themselves. So I’m not going to despair.
“I’m sure of one thing,” he continued, after a little more thought, “as I’m so much better I don’t want any doctoring, and it’s my duty to attend to poor old Dick, and I’m going to do it. It’s very horrible to be in such a hole as this, but I know that the first luff won’t rest until he has found every one of his party, and the captain won’t rest till he has found his officer, and—”
Frank Murray’s cogitations were at an end, for just as he had come to the conclusion that matters were far better than he expected, and that all he had to do was to devote himself to his comrade’s recovery, which was already on the way, he started suddenly, for he was conscious of a slight rustling noise somewhere apparently at the back of the hut, a sound as of some animal forcing its way through the dense growth which shut the building in upon three sides.
Murray’s heart began to beat fast as he listened, for the noise was repeated, and though there was caution connected with the movement, the sound was of such a nature that he was not long in doubt as to its cause.
It was, as far as the lad could determine, a man forcing his way through the jungle at the back; and then, just as it came close at hand, so close that the rough walls of the hut seemed to quiver, the sound ceased again, and in the midst of the deep silence which ensued, the lad felt convinced that he was being watched by some one who was peeping through the wall opposite to where he crouched over his sleeping companion; and he waited in agony for some fresh movement, ready to spring up with his cutlass gripped in his hand.
His excitement seemed to grow till he could bear it no longer, and he rose to his feet, and stepped softly to the side of the door, just as there was a louder rustle than ever, and some one bounded out of the thicket right to the front of the doorway, stared into the darkness for a brief moment, and then turned and ran along the edge of the rough plantation, disappearing amongst a clump of maize-stalks. Murray was beginning to breathe freely, in the hope that in the brief glance he had not been seen in the darkness within, when his heart sank once more, for he recalled the hole he had hacked in the thatch—a hole which must have flooded the place with light.
At that moment there was the soft pad of footsteps again, and to his horror, in company with the rustle of the tall corn stalks, the figure of the black, who now seemed to be herculean in build, dashed into sight, armed, as the middy could see, with a heavy machete, and coming rapidly straight for the door of the hut.